A little light relief

Welcome back to the Wolf's blog.

Been a few of those weeks work-wise, so a little light relief of the LOL kind is required...

You see - even kittens know the value of their - hardcopy - Ency Brits !!

Arrr!! It be International Talk Like A Pirate Day !

Couldn`t let such an auspicious tide go past without addin' a quick piratical post - from Th' Wolf o' Th' Seas !

Be havin' a great tide all ye wannabes an' may th' seas swallow any o' th' real ones!

and...

Happy Birthday James!

Scrappy times

Well, as much as the Wolf has a conscientious objection to the idea of scrapbooking - the possibilities of the needless destruction of original and irreplaceable photos (less of a worry these digital days)... but now you can safely scrap away in a virtual manner!
Definitely need plenty of time - uploading pics, selecting decals and stickers, etc - will take a while.
A nifty and more decorative way to share photos of any occasion, especially with distant friends and it is another useful app eg. to use for the production of marketing/promotion materials.
So try Scrapblog - it's fun and free;
Here's one I came up with to try it out: http://www.scrapblog.com/6946b50947/086C21D5-B9D0

Not a Jott!

As this tool is only available to folks in the US of A, the Wolf is not too fussed by its absence here. Jott.com is a combined alerting service where you can use voicemail to the service to generate 'notes to self', calls/notes to others, etc - eg. one can phone jott, record a voicemail which can then generate a text/email that is sent to one or several. I'd have to admit that this broadcast function could be useful - if you didn't have a chance to text/email a message yourself (which would probably take the same - or less - time!) It has a variety of other features to play with, but if you need to phone a service, record a voicemail, receive a text and email to remind yourself to buy milk on the way home... you really need to take a break from technology !

Animoto sample

For your viewing pleasure !

Getting Animoto-ed

Another in the range of cool tools selected by the Wolf!
Be your own director, producer, sound editor & cinematographer all in one. There's a free acount option so you can add your images, choose or add the music and let Animoto mix you up a video clip. The Wolf made a (not really) quick sample, as you can see here. (Took a bit of time to sort, find, upload photos, edit plus the 3 steps saving the video-as-you-go were a bit slow - but likely that was the computer and the traffic in the ether!) Did highlight one good tip - prepare a dedicated folder with your selected pics in your photohost for each video you plan to make - only need about 10 pics for the 30 sec video, though it won't necessarily use them all. Liked the 'remix' option - where you can change the way the graphics morph to have a new video - without losing the original.
You can then send your creation to a blog, by email to friends, to YouTube, etc.
Certainly fun and a great new twist on a slide night!

Feeling nostalgic?

So much out on the web revolves around the 'new' - it's a nice change to play around looking at the 'old'.
One site the Wolf's been told about is Retroland, lots of interesting stuff and wiki-ish in design and content, but too US centric for my taste. Another one I found while cruisin for old stuff is Nostalgiacentral - I found I like this site alot more, including the look and layout. It covers 1950s-1980s news/events, music, television and other popular culture. Better still, it includes a not-small amount of Australian material.
More place to trawl around for memories of delights (and perhaps horrors) past include: the Internet Movie Database, the Big Cartoon Database, British TV History incl its links page, the British Film Institute's film & tv database and televisionau.com for Australian stuff on the small screen.

Some classics of the Wolf's past - Kimba the White Lion (1960s amime/manga; and the original Lion King!) ; cereal toys (yes... you do remember them!) ; Astro Boy (more 60s anime).